Music of Our Times: Eight Canadian Singer-Songwriters

Desmond Maley is a librarian with the J.W. Tate Library, Huntington
College, Laurentian University.

Only in recent years has popular culture begun to attract the critical
attention it deserves. Popular music is no exception. Significantly,
Adria’s Music of Our Times is the first book-length study on the
subject, covering eight of Canada’s most prominent singer-songwriters.

Adria profiles Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Joni
Mitchell, Bruce Cockburn, Murray McLaughlan, Jane Siberry, and k.d.
lang. In separate chapters, he traces each musician’s career in
popular idioms such as folk, rock, and country. He analyzes noteworthy
albums and songs, and concludes with his recommendation for the
musician’s best song and album. Discographies, suggestions for further
reading, and bibliographical references round out the presentation.
Unfortunately, there is no index.

Popular musicians labor under powerful constraints. Commercial radio
stations, for example, will not play songs that exceed three or four
minutes, that are dissimilar to other songs on the station’s
play-list, or that lack a melodic “hook” that gets listeners’
attention. Then there is the tremendous impress of American popular
music. Canadian musicians can adopt, adapt, or even reject—as, in a
sense, Cockburn has done—the American model, but it unquestionably
dominates Canadian popular music, just as it dominates that of the rest
of the world.

Adria shows that, despite the pressures, these are musicians of
integrity. They write music that expresses their individuality while at
the same time testing the limits of the genre. One comes away with an
understanding not only of what these musicians have accomplished, but
also of what they have tried to accomplish.